Just Like This
by orsa-verba
Summary: Finding your soulmate is supposed to be the single best moment of a person's life. There's meant to be fanfare and exhilaration, indescribable joy filling every crevice of your heart. [ QuinPeter ] [ Spiderio ] [ PeterBeck ]


Finding your soulmate is supposed to be the single best moment of a person's life. There's meant to be fanfare and exhilaration, indescribable joy filling every crevice of your heart.

It's not meant to be like this. Not a glass box surrounded by S.H.I.E.L.D agents, Peter on one side and Beck on the other.

* * *

Their marks were delayed. It happens. Sometimes the bond takes its time forming and congealing into something real, solidifying on the skin over the course of days.

Beck's must have come in first, because Peter's is still faded and smudged on his arm. There are billowing spirals beginning to fan out from the inside of his wrist, where carefully inked letters are bound to form. But Beck's mark is clear as day. A cobweb of white scars carved over his forearm, up over his elbow. On the inside of his wrist in bold letters;

Peter Benjamin Parker

* * *

"Well I guess our plan for containing Beck is straight out the goddamn window."

Quentin would like to kill Nick Fury. Not for the sake of some grand scheme this time. Just because the man keeps talking to his Peter in that condescending tone of voice, as if all of this is somehow _his_ fault.

Hm. _His_ Peter.

It has a nice ring to it.

* * *

The tears don't come until Peter is most of the way home. A hot wash of anger nearly bowls him over, and at the tail end of it comes a burning in his eyes so intense that he has to stop moving. He's breathing hard, shoulders shaking like if he relaxes even a fraction he'll shatter into a thousand pieces.

It isn't fair. _It isn't fair_.

There may not be much in life he _does_ deserve, but Peter knows he doesn't deserve _this_. Let the name come in different, let S.H.I.E.L.D's assessment be wrong.

Anyone, _anyone_ but Quentin Beck.

* * *

Peter prays to every god and goddess he can think of.

But even Thor has stopped listening to humanity's cries.

* * *

Days later, the letters form on his arm. They look like brushstrokes.

Quentin Beck

* * *

It always begins with the marks. Then comes the dreams.

If he and Beck were closer, physically speaking, they might be able to avoid them. Pairs who saw each other regularly were able to satisfy whatever caused the bond to link their minds together. Gestures of affection and physical contact helped.

Beck was miles away in a bulletproof containment cube.

Peter never wanted to see him again as long as he lived.

Especially not inside his own mind.

* * *

They dream.

* * *

Quentin hated Tony Stark for a lot of reasons. He hated him for being a bastard, for being a hero, for being his inspiration and once upon a time something like a mentor. Hated him for fucking him over, for cutting him loose, for seeing the ugly parts that Quentin tried so fucking hard to camouflage.

Presently, he hated Tony Stark because he _kept fucking dreaming about him_.

The dream wasn't his.

The bond made dreams more vivid. It was like walking through a door into Wonderland, or Narnia, but all he had to do was close his eyes. Scientists theorized that the purpose of this heightened subconscious state was to allow soulmates to interact, even if they had only met briefly and were trying to find one another.

Well, Quentin wasn't moving anytime soon and Peter could find him any time he liked. It seemed unfair to subject him to the same farce every night.

* * *

Peter's dreams were unkind to him.

He dreamed of a perfect world.

In his perfect world, he'd wake up and leave the house, then take the train to Manhattan. Or sometimes, he found himself waiting for the last bell to ring so classes would let out. Twice, he'd already been on the train when the dream began.

He always ended up at the same place. Jogging into Avengers Tower, where Mr. Stark was waiting for him. "_You're late, kid._" he'd say.

And then Beck would appear in his periphery and tear the dream apart with a flood of colors and sound. Think _Alice in Wonderland_ but without the singing flowers, or stacks of dominos falling only instead they're buildings. His dreams were eclectic and electric and bizarre.

Peter's dream is mundane. It is routine and familiar, and it drawls on into a normal day at his internship. Nothing exciting happens. He and Mr. Stark talk. Sometimes, Morgan and her mother make an appearance. The few times the dream has run its course, Peter feels alive.

But Beck has taken to wrecking it before it ever gets that far.

* * *

Of _course_ he ruins things before they drag on.

It's not the mundanity of it all. There's something charming to Peter's dreams being what they are. Quentin thinks he could watch Peter staring into space and still be entertained.

What frustrates him is the hopelessness.

There is no truth in the dream, though it tries so hard to emulate a desired reality. Tony Stark is _dead_. He's gone, everything he ever loved or built left behind, and clinging to his afterimage is a curse. Peter can't grow like this.

He'll never heal.

So Quentin destroys his dreams before they give him comfort, in the hopes he'll find some in the real world instead.

* * *

Peter hates him.

The mark on his arm becomes a technicolor mirage, undulating in symphonies of color that refuse to be ignored.

Peter takes to wearing long sleeves.

* * *

Quentin can't get into the dream.

He presses against the edges of it, hugging the slippery walls of Peter's imagination, trying to find a crack to worm his way through. But there isn't one. The shell is impenetrable.

Confusion turns to rage.

Yet, no matter how Quentin seethes and screams and flings himself against the surface of the dream, it never gives.

* * *

No one has written about soulmates who shut each other out. No one likes to think about them. To acknowledge they exist means to think of a bond so flawed that one half tries to cut it.

Imagine having your spine cut from your back. Or your heart cleaved from within your chest.

Air caught and bottled before it can reach your lungs.

No one talks about what happens to soulmates like that.

* * *

It has been more than a week since Quentin last stood within the dream. He wanders the outside of it now, a blank space without color or sound, where he is a concept and not a living being. Had he never experienced dreaming alongside his other half, he might even find it peaceful.

He begins to tug at the edges of the dream.

At first, he thinks to unravel it. Send it spilling out over its own edges, cascading into the open nothingness where he exists so he can _feel_ something again.

The dream does not unravel.

Instead, it _stretches_.

* * *

Peter has gone back to wearing long sleeves.

He stopped for a while when Aunt May bought him a cover meant to hide the mark. For most, it's a sign of modesty or intimacy with their soulmate. Peter was just glad not to see the damn thing.

But then the mark began to spill out over the edges of the sheathe, creeping up his bicep to his shoulder. Like an oil spill on his skin.

* * *

Quentin Beck never features in Peter's dreams.

No matter how far they expand, how much the edges are stretched, he never appears. Quentin yanks and pulls at the dream, making it bigger and bigger and _bigger_ until there is almost no space left for him in the void.

Tony Stark retires after years of hard work. He settles down with his wife and daughter, surrounded by friends.

Peter inherits his legacy.

Years pass in the dream, but no one ever dies. Everything is a shade of comfortable normalcy the waking Peter Parker will never experience.

Eventually, he marries his high school sweetheart. Her name is MJ. They don't share a mark.

Then again, in the dream, he doesn't have Quentin's either.

* * *

"You have a soulmate." MJ says.

"Not really." Peter pleads.

She shakes her head at him, neither saddened nor irate. If he didn't know her so well, he'd think she was being condescending.

Their breakup is quiet. Fundamentally, it changes nothing about their relationship.

He wonders if that says something. That being friends with her is the same as being her boyfriend was.

* * *

Peter's mark is lighter than before.

Quentin stares at it, numb with the realization.

He can still see the spiderweb patterning, the name stamped at their center, but they've faded. Shrunk. Where before the mark reached up past his elbow, it's now at least an inch below it.

He wishes he were allowed something sharp in his cage.

Then at least he could trace over the mark before it's gone and have the scars left to remember it by.

* * *

After the dreams, pairs are meant to begin feeling a feedback loop of emotions from their other half. A sort of empathic telepathy that stretches across any distance.

Peter prods warily at that part of the bond inside of him. He never feels anything. Thank god.

* * *

Today, Peter was tired, then hungry, then irritated, then confused, then proud, then happy.

Today, Peter was excited, then sad, then relieved, then determined.

Today, Peter was happy. Just happy.

It's nice, feeling him just being happy.

* * *

Quentin's mark floods over Peter's shoulder and threatens the edge of his neck and clavicle. The spiraling iridescence has begun to creep down the back of his palm.

* * *

There is no dream tonight.

There is only darkness.

Darkness and fear so potent he can taste it even from outside the dream.

Quentin skims the edges of Peter's subconscious, searching frantically for the boy at the center of the nightmare. From outside, he can't see what plagues him. He only knows it's there.

* * *

Peter feels fear. Feels agony. Feels sorrow, pain, and desperation. He is being swallowed by them.

* * *

Quentin pushes against the membrane that keeps him away from his soulmate. He lays the whole of himself, the concept that is Quentin Beck in this space, over the glossy surface of it. It will not give. He cannot break it.

_Please._ he pleads. _Please._

The barrier doesn't give. Quentin simply slides through it.

Not all of him, not the bits that make him human. He is feelings instead, emotions, dust particles made of love, hate, joy, sadness, and acceptance.

When the essence of him touches the darkness, he bursts into colors. Now, he is smoke and mirrors, hundreds of them forming from sand and glass, reflecting light back onto themselves. The darkness flees, coiling away towards the farthest edges of the dreamscape.

Peter exists amidst the mirrors. Quentin sees him without seeing him, feels him without knowing exactly where. Somewhere within the rainbow smoke and reflective glass, he's safe from the darkness.

It's enough.

* * *

There is only one mirror.

Peter stands before it, bathed in a rainbow reflected off crystal, more colors than he can name dappling his skin. He stares into its surface and sees a self he cannot name.

Quentin Beck holds the mirror steady, darkness licking at his heels. The kaleidoscope of colors doesn't touch him.

If only it _would_.

* * *

By now, Peter's mark has shrunk to barely cover the bottom half of his forearm. The lines are nearly lost, only the name retaining enough pigment to be seen.

But Peter Parker stands outside his cage, looking up at him like he's seeing him for the first time.

"Hello, Beck." he says.

Quentin smiles for the first time in almost a year.

"Hello, Peter."

* * *

Quentin Beck is fantastic at cards and a savant at chess. He's terrible at checkers and finds Go horribly dull.

One evening, Peter brings a beat up Scrabble board. It turns out that Quentin has a vocabulary like a thesaurus and Peter truly loves to hear him talk.

* * *

"Fury's sending me to Paraguay."

"Do you want to go?"

"It's where I'm needed."

"That's not an answer."

* * *

The barrier fades away. Quentin reforms within the dream, no longer a concept and once again a man. He wanders their dreamscape, waiting for the same crop of buildings and cast of characters to appear.

When they don't after two nights, he begins to fill in the space with acid-wash daydreams.

One night, Peter joins him.

* * *

In Paraguay, Peter feels loneliness.

It takes him a while to realize that it is not his own.

He reaches for the feeling, cradling it in his hands like it's something fragile. There's no warmth in it. The loneliness is cold and brittle. It belongs to Quentin, yet here some of it is within Peter.

He takes it and holds it. With Quentin's loneliness nestled in his chest, Peter feeds yearning back into the bond.

The shock of joy that comes bursting back at him is so genuinely bright he thinks it might fill his chest with sunlight.

* * *

The guards notice when Peter's mark begins to take shape again. Quentin walks his cage in short sleeves, surrounded by glass on all sides. It's difficult to miss.

They'd been so _smug_ as it faded. Even the sympathetic ones looked at him with eyes that said he deserved it. They may have been right. It didn't matter now.

Intricate shocks of white spin themselves over his arm. The web was stiff before, but now it sprawls over him with abandon. Threads twist and form around each other, branding him in solid white again.

Peter's name is bold on his inner wrist.

Quentin takes to laying his lips against it once before he goes to sleep.

* * *

Peter's hand is small and delicate compared to Quentin's. If he curled his fingers inward, his fingertips would touch over the back of Peter's palm. They'd rest over the trails of his mark as they snuck down his skin.

This is the closest thing to madness Peter has ever felt.

His hand pressed to inch-thick glass, his soulmate's laying on the other side. He can see how they fit, knows where they'll mesh, but he can't even feel the warmth.

Fury said no, when he asked if he could go into the cube with Quentin. He said he was too dangerous.

Not for Peter, he wasn't.

* * *

In their dream, Peter knots their hands together tightly. Green ribbons and red string twist around their palms and wrists, binding them there. Quentin never stops him. He adds busy patterns to the ribbon and runs a thread of gold through the string.

"It's not fair." Peter says.

"I know."

"_It's not fair._"

Quentin's lips are soft against his forehead. Or maybe that's just how he imagines them.

"I know."

* * *

Everyone stares when Peter comes to class in short sleeves.

Quentin's mark is bold on his skin, a tapestry of wave patterns and gorgeous hues. It peeks out of the collar of his shirt, slipping up his neck and over his collarbone and consumes the whole of his left arm. No one knows what to say when they see it, but they can't ignore it either.

Peter hates that he ever covered it. He wears it confidently now and sends _pride pride pride_ over the bond to Quentin.

All Quentin sends back is affection, cotton soft and comforting. Peter traces his name on the inside of his wrist.

It's not enough.

* * *

Having the healing factor is great, except when it isn't. Hospitals are a foreign concept to Peter, too much of a risk and not enough of a necessity.

Sometimes he wishes there was somewhere for him to go. The healing takes _time_ when his injuries are bad and then all he does it hurt and hurt and hurt.

Quentin feels rage. Pain because he isn't there. He tries to smother those two in warm emotions directed at Peter.

But Peter feels his fury. It's fire in his belly and oil on his tongue. Maybe it belonged to Quentin first, but it settles into Peter like his ribs are dry wood and he's ready to go up in flames.

"Enough." he says in their dream.

Quentin's arms are tight and binding around him. Like he can hold them together with willpower alone.

"I've had enough."

* * *

"You're going to release Quentin Beck into my custody."

Fury stares at him like he's grown a second head.

He stands up from behind his desk, towering over Peter even when he leans over to brace his hands on the wood.

"And _why_," he says slowly. "Would I do that?"

"Because I'm telling you to."

"Do you really think you can just walk in here and make demands, Parker? If you haven't forgotten already, Beck has-"

"I know what he's done."

"So you understand why I'm _denying_ your request."

Peter doesn't bend under Fury's stare. He doesn't back down. He stands as tall as he can, firm and undaunted, just like Quentin always does.

There's steel in his eyes.

"I'm not making a request. Or a demand." Peter says. "I'm telling you what you're going to do."

"And what if I don't?"

* * *

He doesn't.

Peter ignores Fury's calls.

Walks straight past the S.H.I.E.L.D agents who approach him.

A team tries to forcibly take him, but only once, because Peter leaves them webbed up with broken bones in an alley.

There's a disaster in Russia.

Spiderman is seen in New York City.

* * *

Quentin Beck is released into Peter's custody.

S.H.I.E.L.D outfits him with a collar, which blinks ominously every few seconds. There are cuffs of the same dark metal, with a similar inlay of silver, also blinking green. Peter can see the place where they implanted a tracker into the back of his neck. It makes him furious.

Like Quentin would ever leave him again.

"If Beck tries anything, we _will_ know about it." Fury glares down at Peter, like that will give his threat more impact.

"I'm not walking out of here in a jumpsuit." Quentin says.

Peter laughs.

He brought Quentin something to change into.

* * *

Maybe it's because she lost her soulmate, but Aunt May is surprisingly accommodating about having a former supervillain living in their apartment. She avoids Quentin at first, much like he does his best not to need to interact with her. They have an unspoken agreement that allows them to flow around each other without their paths intersecting too often.

All it takes is Peter coming home beat to hell once for that to change.

Now, he walks in and finds them sitting at the kitchen table, talking over mugs of coffee. Quentin eats dinner with them and sits on the couch bitching about the news anchors with May. He fits into the empty space Peter didn't know existed, and he fits _perfectly_.

"He's a good guy." his Aunt tells him one night, as they wash the dishes.

Peter thinks he might burst he's so happy.

* * *

Life goes on.

Everything is more or less the same.

Peter saves the day in between finals and college applications, and Quentin finds work remotely for a studio that needs an expert in CGI.

When they both have a moment to spare, they go out together. Peter shows Quentin all his favorite places and Quentin takes Peter to a hundred hidden gems he never knew the city had to offer. He buys him his first beer, quickly followed by his first mixed drink, which Peter likes better. They go dancing and hold hands as they walk through Central Park.

Sometimes, he sees the distance in Quentin's gaze, can feel the longing for freedom echoing in him. He understands it now. That like him, Quentin is bigger than his skin, has more or offer than he can express as a simple citizen. If he'd walked a different path, he could have been a hero.

In their dreamscape, sometimes he is.

Peter holds those dreams together at the seams when Quentin tries to tear them apart.

"It's _pointless_." he'll seethe.

And Peter, ever hopeful, will whisper; "Maybe one day."

* * *

Peter moves out when he starts college. Quentin, naturally, goes with him.

They get an apartment that Peter is too busy and distracted to furnish. So Quentin does. They eat too much takeout and have a whole room of computers and circuit boards they spend way too much time in.

Barely two months into their lease, Peter comes home with a kitten tucked into his jacket. She's tiny and soaking wet. Quentin spends most of the night watching videos on how to care for kittens and stays up until dawn making sure she's fed.

She makes it through the night. Then the next. Three months later, she's their own personal terror. They love her a lot.

Quentin hides her in his sweater any time the landlord stops by.

They never paid the pet deposit. They could, but Peter thinks Quentin has fun keeping her a secret.

* * *

Life is nothing like Peter dreamed it would be.

It's nothing like how Quentin imagined either.

They both stumbled down twisting paths to get where they are, scraping their knees and tripping more than a few times as they went. But they got here in the end, crashing into one another without meaning to. It hurt. It almost killed them.

It was worth it.

Peter traces the lines of his mark up Quentin's arm and over his shoulder. It's begun to spin itself across his right side, almost down to his hip. There's no color, just the stark white against Quentin's skin, which Peter thinks looks like scars. He knows Quentin likes it that way.

His fingers drag over his soulmate's chest until his palm rests against his beating heart. The way his ribs expand and contract as he breathes makes Peter feel at home.

Quentin loops an arm around Peter's naked waist and drags him in closer, mumbling sleepily before burying his face against his neck.

They should really get up. There are errands to run and homework to be done, and a feisty calico bound to wake up and start screaming for food any minute now. But Peter stays where he is, in their bed with Quentin breathing against his pulse.

_This is how it's supposed to be._ Peter thinks. _Just like this._


End file.
